A personal viewpoint on fbi based on the information from a documentary

FBI Documentary paper

Like a lot of other people, I thought the FBI were the coolest people ever due to what I saw on television. I thought they had cool gadgets and secret technological devices that helped them solve cases easily. Growing up watching shows such as Cold Case, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, and even shows now such as Hawaii Five-O I didn’t think being an FBI agent was that hard. I thought only extremely smart people could be FBI agents and that they solved tons of cases with very little struggle. I always found it cool how they could look up cases from 30 years back and link it to a more recent case where they had enough evidence to now convict the killer. After coming to your class the second or third day you soon crushed those beliefs by using your own knowledge and experiences. So I then began to wonder if it wasn’t how the television shows displayed it then what did the FBI really do?

I learned and hot a way better understanding of what the FBI actually does. I learned they are regular people who make mistakes but try their best to make this world a better place. This documentary talked about the FBI explosive unit which used old cars from a junk yard to blow up to try to find out what type of bomb was used at a crime scene. They rush to get to the crime scene and get residue/dust samples from the car as well as any parts of the car (preferably a special number hidden on it to let them know who manufactured this car and who they rented/sold the car to) that can lead them to a suspect, the type of bomb, etc to help them solve this case. After 9/11 the FBI started to really crack down on trying to prevent another event like this from ever happening again. They got special FBI agents from the bombing unit to watch over a stadium to make sure if anyone was trying to kill another massive group of people they would be stopped before it could happen. One of their biggest challenges was trying to think in the mind of a criminal to prevent the crimes of a criminal and that I can imagine is very hard to do.

What surprised me was even back then they had people who were crooked and doing more damage to people’s lives than good. J. Hoover was so desperate for attention that he would do anything to be in the spotlight, when he died they released secret files that showed blackmail for different well known people from John Lennon to Martin Luther King. With the blackmail of MLK the files of information was sent to his wife and it was said that his only way out of all of this turmoil was to commit suicide which really shocked me because it shows that being crooked in a high authority spot is clearly nothing new. I also learned that people in the FBI truly do care and will go above and beyond to save cases. The 11-year-old girl that was abducted and found four months later dead was a very tragic case and the two agents who were on it looked into trying to find the killer for 13 years until they both retired. Even after they both retired they told the incoming agents all the information they knew so they could continue this case, knowing this information put me a little more at ease. I always figured that after a death if you couldn’t find the answers to a case after a few years they just forgot about it an labeled it a lost cause but after watching this documentary and seeing how much time, energy, and effort they put into this I realize that there are people who really care about their job. One man said with every traumatic case it stays with you and you can never forget it so you try your best to solve the case to hopefully give family and friends closure as well as make yourself feel good about doing good for others and helping them sleep better at night. After watching this documentary my view on the FBI is a lot more realistic but I still find them to be some of the coolest people ever even if they aren’t like the people on TV.